June 8th

Shortly after midnight I passed out. At 5:30 AM, I awoke to a nurse checking my vitals. I asked her about the baby and she informed me that the staff had spent much of the night clearing fluids from his lungs and he had just fallen asleep. She said it was best not to wake him and to wait for him to wake himself. Afterall, he had had a rough last few days as well. I remember trying to move at this point, but was unable to do so. Besides the pain in my abdomen, my legs still felt flimsy from all the drugs. They had set me up with this painkiller button that would give me a hit each time I pressed it. Unfortunately I was only allowed one hit every ten minutes. (Let me tell you I pressed it a lot, but felt little relief.) I then dozed off again.

By 10:00 Rob and I were both up and discussed names for the baby. We had about 4 different possibilities. I told Rob that I needed to see him again before we could name him. We would then know what name would best fit him. It wasn’t until 10:30 that the nurse finally brought him in. Holding him in my arms was wonderful. We instantly knew his name as well. KYLAN.

Rob and I had really liked the Hawaiiian name KAI—meaning ocean. However the name Kai is often mispronounced “Kay”. We had seen the gaelic name Kylan in passing recently and figured this was actually a very good alternative. Kylan comes from the name Kyle—and thus we could also still call him Ky—where the “Y” would be understood as a long “I”. So the name Kylan has a variety of meanings. Coming from KYLE –it means handsome. It also means Church, wood, or a narrow strait. Since our boy is very handsome we like the Kyle derivative.

We had had a middle name already picked out, but I told Rob that I wanted to change it to a name that started with “J”. That way Ky could go by “KJ” if he wanted to. I mentioned James, but Rob mentioned Jacob. He liked the name Jacob. I liked Jacob as well, I just don’t like it as a first name where he could be called Jake. (Makes me think of Jake the Snake Roberts---Old School WWF.) So Jacob became his middle name.

Kylan Jacob Schnake.

I’m not going to go into too much descriptive details of my recovery. However, I willl say that I never want to go through surgery again. And having your abdomen cut open sucks. Everything you do involves your abdominal muscles, so every movement is felt.

I do want to mention my very impressive 13 staples, though. Yes—they actually stapled me shut. I now know that if I am with someone who has a serious laceration I could just staple them shut to help stop the bleeding….hmmm….

Anyway—it was almost 72 hours before I was able to eat again. YEAH FOOD!!! However after having my intestines and stomach moved around, I honestly was not that hungry. They finally removed my IV on day 4, which was also wonderful to see go. There is nothing like dragging around a rack of fluids each time you need to use the restroom.

Kylan was WONDERFUL!!! He would get a little fussy at night, but otherwise he was an angel during the day. He caught on to nursing rather quickly as well.
We stayed in the hospital until Sunday—Day 6 of our delivery adventure. They removed the staples then and packaged my incision with steri-strips. I was also given very specific instructions telling me that I pretty much shouldn’t do or lift anything heavier than Kylan for six weeks. They were pretty specific…in fact on one sheet it told me not to vacuum. So now rob has become the official housekeeper....

Well, I am going to end this entry here. The next entry I will update with our first few days at home….Here are some more pics of our little sunshine.